webOS Weekly - Spring is here, so what's next?

Want to know what's been happening in the webOS world this past week? As we continue to draw closer to the highly anticipated launch of the Veer, Pre 3 and TouchPad, fans everywhere are getting a bit antsy with trying to find activities to hold us over. This last week has brought us another look at the TouchPad, some insight into projects that a few developers are working on, as well as a few fun bits to keep everyone looking at the brighter side of things while we (anxiously) wait.

Check out all of the links and details below just after the break.

From the blogs:

With webOS 2.0 comes autocorrect, and with autocorrect comes the funnies. Roy seems to have had a slight problem with his own autocorrect, as have many of us lately. But his just so happened to land on DYAutocorrect.com. Check out the sad text that he sent to a friend. Note: The site may be a bit NSFW, so tread carefully.

asymco is a tech website that reports various types of data to users to explain the trends that are happening in the mobile tech space. Recently they took a look at how smartphones are infiltrating the phone market, and wonder if there will ever come a time when "smartphone" will be replaced with just "phone". If HP is able to ship a large portion of their 100 Million devices this year as Smartphones, then webOS will certainly help make that prediction come true.

You've already ready our full review of the Pre 2 last week, but now that many others in the community have taken to getting the device (while waiting for summer to arive), a few other reviews have popped up as well. One user at the INNTW blog has written one of those reviews and explains why the Pre 2 is now his main device. With what @backlon said recently about the Pre 3, though, we wonder if many people will regret the decision to get a Pre 2 right now.

With the warmth of spring and summer just around the corner, people are getting in the mood to start meeting up to talk about their favorite webOS devices. While one meeting is going on tonight in Denver, another is in the works to be set for next week in San Francisco, and on Twitter there are other ideas floating around as well. There are plenty of other places for meetups to be organized, though... are you going to any?

zhephree has been doing some reading lately about good practices as a developer to find success and be productive while managing your submitted programs in any mobile app catalog. He has come to three conclusions (simplified here) that other developers might want to take up as well: Ignore reviews, don't put an app on sale, and don't blindly distribute promo codes. Of course, that might make sense for a developer, but what about users? Check out his full explanation here.

On YouTube:

Angry Birds Rio is out for webOS (and all other major platforms), and it does a fantastic job at updating the classic mobile game from Rovio and satisfying our addiction once more. With Bing now being made more widely available on webOS devices, we thought you might like to see the short video series that Rovio and Bing have made together. They're fun, and show exactly what we want more of on our mobile devices this year: the ability to access the entire web, not just a few features that Google allows us to access.

TheDailyTrae has been using both an iPad and a Palm Pre for a little while, and has found himself in an awful predicament: the iPad doesn't use gestures. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the TouchPad will either, but at least right now we can see the problem with having different operating systems for each type of computing device you might have.

The Basketball Coach Clipboard was released for webOS last month, and the developer jpluscorp have released a short video to share the features that were made available on the Palm Pre. This app is pretty darn cool, to be honest. Which is to say, this seems to be an extremely useful app for basketball fans in general, not just coaches. Now all we need is a Lacrosse app to start up a PreCentral team.... oh wait, there it is.

HP webOS gets another video rundown on the TouchPad straight from the creators in a very nice piece that shows all of the major features that are coming with webOS 3.0. The audio of the video is a bit crappy, but the video itself is very informative for those who haven't already seen the features that are coming with the next iteration of webOS. Hopefully some webOS commercials will start popping up with a similar goal of educating potential users - here's hoping.

In this last video of Tweetfeest, we can't really tell you exactly what is being said by the speakers (maybe someone from the Netherlands can help with that?) but we do get the sense that the event was had quite a varied group of mobile users, with a few sporting webOS devices as well (the very first device shown is with Foursquare for webOS). The event might be about Twitter, for sure, but at least now we know there is a nice group of webOS fans in the area (and if you are there, it might be time to start one of those meetups we discussed before).

Twitter-galore

Sadly, the new Angry Birds Rio is not yet available for the Pixi, but if Rovio is true to their word, we should be seeing it arrive sometime in the future for our small-screened friends.

Apparently, @martosays is feeling the same eagerness as the rest of us to hear some word about the Veer in the US. Can't say we'd be surprised if Palm didn't respond directly to him right now, since no one actually knows what the future holds just yet, but we keep hoping for some bit of news. It's Spring already, so maybe it will come sooner rather than later.

While some developers are busy getting ready to update their apps for next released devices, others are just getting started on their first apps to release on a single device. @Propagandash has just finished their "Hello, World." app in webOS, and are moving onto the next step. But don't underestimate a webOS developer noobie, we've seen them do great things before.

We've seen some badly damaged webOS devices show up in the past, and Jessie Doogan has only fallen prey to one of the more annoying ones. Her Pre screen has been scratched, and is now spazzing out of control. Perhaps someone can give her a hand finding a solution? Maybe it's just time to upgrade to the Gorilla Glass on a Pre 2.

For some webOS users, the weather outside is still pretty bad, but for others, like @ReemaL0vesYou, it couldn't get much better. So when she decided to take a photo on her Pre 2 of what she's enjoying in South California, we can't help but feel a little bit of bitter jealousy towards her...

Know of any other stories that you would like to add to this list next week? Send an email to tim@precentral.net and let us know what you would like to see here.